Sunday, March 23, 2014

Spring has officially started in this year!. Spring is one of my favorite times of the year. The trees are all budding and becoming green again. The flowers are beginning to bloom. And my favorite of all, the animals are being born. Here on my little farm I raise Shetland Sheep. I love that breed because they are small, gentle natured, good looking, and provide wool for spinning and adorable lambs to watch! I only have 5 ewes and one ram so far but as of right now 2 of my Shetlands and one random Katahdin ewe that I have, have given birth to a total of 4 babies. They are now at the age where they share mothers, jumping up on whoever might be laying down. They butt heads, play tag, play race, chase and king of the mountain. It is so much fun to sit out in the pasture with them and watch them frolic and play. We have 2 more ewes that should be lambing soon and I'm excited to see their babies!

Sunday, March 9, 2014

At my small farm I recently purchased two half grown female turkeys to be mates to my tom turkey that I already had. They are somewhat nervous birds, compared to the tom who loves attention and will come up to you and let you pet him. They are beautiful, but nervous. They live in the shed with about 8 geese and 3 ducks.

The geese are bullies and always picking on someone. They think they rule the whole farm and have even attacked the pony while it was being ridden. That's another story though.

Frequently I let the geese and ducks and turkeys loose in the great outdoors so they can graze, swim in the larger sized tub and run around and eat bugs. They love it and get so sad when I don't let them out. A few days ago, when I let them out, the two female turkeys decided to jump (or fly) to the roof of my rabbit shed and then to the tallest branches of the tree that shades the rabbit hutch! I was so surprised. I had no idea that turkeys loved to be up so high. The first day they did that, they came down in the late afternoon and went to bed in the rafters of their shed.

A few days later, they again flew up to the top of the tree, which is an oak tree. This time however, they refused to come down. The tom turkey went to bed in the shed as usual but his girls played hooky on him and slept in the tree. Unfortunately this caused me problems because the dogs that get let out at night and morning would have been able to attack the turkeys. I had to stand watch in the morning, with sleepy eyes.

A few days after that, the girl turkeys decided to fly up to the very top of an even higher tree that shades the house. I climbed up as high as I could get and poked at them with the longest stick I could find. I managed to scare one of them down out of the tree but the other spent the night again up as high as she could get.

I still haven't figured out why they think its so great to be up so high but they love it. I will have to see when they get full grown if they still do that!

Sunday, March 2, 2014

My family eats dinners cooked from scratch. Growing up in another country, we didn't have the facility and ease that most Americans currently enjoy. We had to plan, prepare, and make everything we wanted to eat. There were no pop tarts, instant potatoes, frozen dinners or already chopped up frozen veggies or things like that. So, we had to make do. We cooked from scratch. We rolled our own pie crusts, even for things like quiche and chicken pot pies. We ate simple meals for the most part. We chopped, boiled, baked, fried, sauteed and made our own meals, all three of them each day.

My own journey into cooking started when I was a girl. My mother was always frustrated with me because I wanted to be creative in the kitchen and didn't want to follow a recipe. I would concoct things that were at times edible and more often than not, I was the only one brave enough to actually eat it! Thankfully I didn't traumatize or poison anyone in my learning curve of young girlhood! One of my favorite past times still is to read cookbooks and recipes and get ideas for dishes and meals that I can invent. I love to learn what spices go good together and to see what happens if you add this to that. When I was first learning to cook she would roll her eyes and get so frustrated with me but I think now she appreciates my creativity!

The other night we were eating a delicious dinner together around the table and got to talking about how many people now days in the United States actually know how to cook a healthy dinner from scratch or do it on a regular basis and what age range those people are. I think it's sad that so many people don't. The family time, the healthier food, the healthier you are overall when you eat home cooked meals from scratch. So I decided to do my own little survey to find out how many people there still are who actually cook from scratch.

So, if you'd like to participate in my little survey, please comment below if you cook from scratch on a regular basis, say at least 5 times a week, and if you are older than or younger than 40 :)